


you’ve got me seeing stars

by evenings



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Blood and Injury, Developing Relationship, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Roommates, Space Royalty, but not really enemies don't worry, fellas is it gay if you would die for your homie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:01:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29003412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evenings/pseuds/evenings
Summary: Jung Jaehyun shows up to the military base on Astraea all the way from a quiet farming planet with absolutely nothing to his name. He’s one in a crowd of hundreds—desperate young men and women looking for a purpose, a uniform, a blaster to hold. By all accounts, he is no one special.But things go a little differently from there.(Or: Jaehyun, Sicheng, and what the start of an intergalactic war looks like.)
Relationships: Dong Si Cheng | WinWin/Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun
Comments: 13
Kudos: 73
Collections: Challenge #4 — Awaken The World





	you’ve got me seeing stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [precedence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/precedence/gifts).



> dedicated to jean, who read through the initial mess of this and convinced me it was worth continuing 
> 
> anyway!! hello! welcome! when i saw the theme for this round's little wonder fest i was like okay let's try this.....and then i think i bit off more than i could chew because i had to cut like 1k from this. heads up that there's like space warfare (the kind you see in star wars) in this fic!! 
> 
> regardless please envision the vibes for this fic as like a mashup of star wars/ender's game/aurora rising + this [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0y4VhGm4MS6zTfLFDhSoTf?si=k_4OAikpQ_WSvY7E8TRoYg)! i've never written a word of sci-fi in my life

The four people sitting beside Jaehyun are probably contributing about half of the current volume in the mess hall of Astraea’s military base. 

Yangyang, Dejun, Ten, Sicheng. The names settle under his skin, fly across the table around him. They’re all from the last recruiting cycle or earlier, with at least a few moons of life on base under their belt. Jaehyun seats himself farther down the table and listens to the flow of conversation: home planets, the latest holos, and, inevitably, to the Alliance’s fabled—and missing—royal family. 

“They bleed gold, don’t they?”

“That’s just cult propaganda,” Dejun says doubtfully. 

“ _No it isn’t_.” Yangyang looks affronted. “That’s how they found the princess, wasn’t it?”

“That wasn’t in the holos.” Dejun’s eyebrows knit together.

“Idiot, of course they wouldn’t put it in the holos.” Yangyang pokes morosely at his food. Without another word Ten leans over and steals the salad off his plate. “I read it on the net. She was hiding with a Marean civilian family. Word got out, so the Empire did a surprise raid on the Mar waypoint and checked every family passing through. They were cleared to leave, but she tripped and fell, and the next thing they knew she was bleeding gold all over the port and people were shouting. They caught her in seconds. They let the family go, though.” 

There’s a pause. 

“Stupid way to get caught, if you ask me,” Yangyang adds under his breath. He picks at his meal again.

Dejun’s eyebrows rise. “She’s _ten_ ,” he says. “You’re barely eighteen.”

“Shut up,” Yangyang retorts, and kicks him. 

Dejun’s retaliation is half-hearted at best. He gives up and goes back to his food. “What does the Empire want with the royal family, anyway?”

“Who knows?” Ten shrugs. “When has anybody ever known what the Empire wants?” 

“Still.” Dejun frowns. “I feel a little bad for the prince. It can’t be easy, being the last one left.”

“I mean—”

“Jung Jaehyun,” a new voice interrupts, and Jaehyun looks up to see Sicheng watching him, elbow propped on the table, as all heads turn in his direction. “What about you?”

Jaehyun puts his fork down. He feels oddly like he’s being interrogated. “What about me?”

“What you think of the royal family,” Ten says impatiently. 

Sicheng’s still watching him. Still looking. Always looking. That keen gaze, that bright, assessing stare. In the hollow of Jaehyun’s ribcage, something stirs.

“Let the prince hide,” Jaehyun says. They’re the first words he’s said since he introduced himself an hour ago. “Saints, he _should_. We’re only fighting because the Empire can’t find him, aren’t we? Seems pointless to show himself now. We might die for him. The least he can do is save himself.” 

Silence. Jaehyun doesn’t break Sicheng’s gaze. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Ten watching the both of them with a furrowed brow, frowning slightly. 

Yangyang’s the one who breaks it. “Royalist,” he snorts, but there’s no heat behind it, and Dejun cuffs the back of his head for the trouble. The tension eases. Jaehyun doesn’t budge.

Sicheng looks away first.

* * *

“So, Jung Jaehyun,” Ten says, during Jaehyun’s first target practice session. He takes aim at a target on the far end of the range. “Where are you from?” 

“Byeolhwa.” 

Ten whistles. “Lovely place.” 

“To grow up, yes.” The blaster kicks in Jaehyun’s hands as he fires. “Not so much to stay for the rest of your life.” 

“Touché.” Ten laughs. His target lights up green again. Despite his unorthodox stance, the loose grip he has on the gun, he hasn’t missed a single shot since they started. “Why are you here, then? Escaping from your sleepy farming planet?” 

“The Alliance is looking for soldiers.” He’s seen the words so many times on holos they’ve almost lost all meaning. “I thought I’d be a decent one.” 

“Ah, Jaehyun,” Ten says, laughing a little. “More believable, please. No one comes to Astraea to be a soldier because they want to fight for the Alliance.” Another shower of sparks. Another green light. “Why are you here?”

The blaster’s warm in his hands; the tape on the grip is worn, tearing a little from use. A pause, in which Jaehyun looks through the sights of the blaster, and Ten looks at him. Expectant. 

“I wanted to be a pilot when I was younger,” Jaehyun says finally. Safety, trigger, recoil. Easy as that. A fragment of childhood given voice in the light, a more uncomplicated dream of days gone by. A piece of his fragile human heart. 

Ten’s smile is audible. “That’s more like it.” 

* * *

The new rooming assignments get handed out at the end of Jaehyun’s first week on base. He rounds the corner into corridor E and stops outside the seventh room on the right, knocking once.

Complete silence. He knocks again, more insistently. 

The door swings open with unexpected force. Jaehyun reels backward, clutching his hand, and almost misses it when the person inside demands exasperatedly, “Ten, what do you _want_ —”

He knows that voice. 

“Oh,” Sicheng says, and freezes in the doorway. He’s got an old, faded shirt on, his hair damp and curling at the nape of his neck. There’s a drop of water trickling down his collarbones, towards the neckline of his shirt. Jaehyun kind of wants to touch it. Instead he just blinks, feeling like he’s been punched in the chest. “You.” 

“Me,” Jaehyun says, rediscovering the ability of speech. He clears his throat. “Can I come in?”

* * *

Something about Sicheng makes Jaehyun want to do very stupid things. Things like challenge him to a practice spar for the top bunk when Jaehyun doesn’t even _like_ the top bunk. 

Sicheng levels him with an unimpressed look. “I don’t like getting injured.” 

“You and everyone else.” Jaehyun smiles. He feels reckless, dizzy with it. “Come on. Just for fun.” 

“You and I have very different definitions of fun,” Sicheng says, sighing, but he’s already settling into position, easing onto the balls of his feet. The placid reluctance falls away, replaced by an alertness, a shrewd kind of intensity not unlike the flash of a blade in the sun. Jaehyun’s blood sings. 

He strikes first. 

* * *

It’s three minutes before Jaehyun hits the floor, the wind thoroughly knocked out of him. He knows when he’s been beaten; he taps the floor and Sicheng’s forearm eases off his throat instantly. 

Sicheng gets to his feet, folding his arms over his chest, as Jaehyun sits up, plants his hands on the floor and leans back. Breathless, heart still beating fast, Jaehyun grins up at Sicheng—and sweaty, messy, yet to pull his usual unreadable composure back together, Sicheng looks very young, and very human.

“You don’t need to worry about getting injured if you fight like that,” Jaehyun says, through the sudden lightness in his chest.

Sicheng's mouth quirks up into a brief smile in response. Jaehyun's heart trips. It's gone as quickly as it came, but it lingers in the edges of his vision, bright and unexpectedly lovely, and makes Sicheng just a boy. Close enough to look at. Close enough to touch. 

He turns on his heel abruptly. “I’m keeping the top bunk.”

It bubbles up and out of Jaehyun, the sudden laughter, the helpless fondness. “Whatever you want, Sicheng.” He flops backward to lie in a heap on the floor and tries valiantly to stop smiling at the ceiling. “Whatever you want.”

* * *

Jaehyun would never say this out loud, least of all to Ten, who would tease him to the stars and back for it, but incredibly, impossibly, he and Sicheng are becoming friends. 

Cohabitation, he’s discovering, does wonders for friendship. (Cohabitation, Jaehyun is also discovering, causes you to find someone more and more attractive. This is an unfortunate problem for another day.) Point being: Jaehyun likes Sicheng. Is liking him more and more by the day, quirks and grumpiness and rare, brilliant smiles and all.

* * *

But when the base’s proximity alarms go off the next morning, when Jaehyun jolts awake to the siren in their room shrieking and Sicheng already out of bed, half-dressed, face pale with panic and illuminated by red light, everything starts going downhill. 

They join half of Astraea’s ground forces in the mess hall, watching the screens, holding their breath. The Empire’s fighters a swarm of black wasps in the Astraean sky. Their own ships screaming through the dogfight. A fighter plummets from the sky with the screech of tearing metal, hits the ground, explodes. Abruptly, Jaehyun realises he’s holding Sicheng’s hand. 

Black smoke. Red flame. Outside, the sky’s on fire. 

“What did I tell you?” Ten says, and even without looking Jaehyun can hear the resigned, rueful note in his voice. 

* * *

Things move quickly, after that. They always do, in war. 

* * *

Ten gets assigned to the air gunner division and disappears from their floor. The next time Jaehyun sees him he’s got Qian Kun’s arm around his shoulders and they’re covered in ash and soot when Jaehyun bumps into them in the corridor leading out of the hangar. Kun’s eyes are drifting closed and Ten’s half-carrying, half-dragging him along. There’s blood on both their faces. 

Ten’s free hand comes up to grab the sleeve of Jaehyun’s shirt. There’s an almost frantic look in his eye. “Where is he?” he demands, and Jaehyun opens his mouth to ask who the hell he’s talking about before it becomes obvious. 

His gaze drifts to somewhere behind Jaehyun. “Sicheng,” Ten says, exhausted, and it sounds almost like a plea. 

Jaehyun turns around in time to see Sicheng’s face crumple for a single second before he visibly pulls himself together, tucks all the grief under the mask of composure and pushes past Jaehyun. He loops Kun’s other arm around his shoulders and the three of them head down the corridor together, Ten saying something to Sicheng, low and urgent, so quietly Jaehyun can’t make out the words.

Still standing in the middle of the corridor, Jaehyun stares after them. Around him, pilots brush past, all in varying states of injury, and the flow of traffic parts around him like he’s not even there. He feels like he’s on the precipice of something towering and looking over the edge. 

Like he’s missed a step where there shouldn’t have been one anyway. 

* * *

It takes until their next deployment, to planet-side Yuegu, before Sicheng brings it up again. 

“You could go home, you know,” Sicheng says suddenly.

Jaehyun blinks at him. “What?”

“You could go home,” Sicheng repeats. “You wanted to be a pilot, right? There’s no hope of that now. You’re in the ground division for good. Why haven’t you gone home?” 

“I—I don’t know.” Jaehyun blinks again. It’s never even occurred to him, the possibility of deserting Astraea, of stowing away on the next cargo transport off base, of simply _leaving_. 

“You’d risk so much for the greater good?” Sicheng’s mouth tilts up, half-mocking, sardonic. 

“Not the greater good,” Jaehyun says quietly. The honesty wells up inside him, sudden, raw. He couldn’t stop it if he tried. “Just you.” 

The smile dies on Sicheng’s lips. Jaehyun watches the setting sun gild his profile in burnished bronze, watches as Sicheng turns to face him, the sky above them the colour of fire, the atmosphere slow and thick as honey. He can feel his pulse in his fingertips.

“I’m not worth a war,” Sicheng says softly. 

“You are.” Jaehyun’s throat has gone dry. “You are to me.”

“Jaehyun.” Sicheng’s gaze is inexplicably sad. “Jaehyun, I—”

* * *

Later, this is all he remembers: the shouted warning, the Empire soldiers rising from the tall grass, the black barrel of a blaster swinging towards Sicheng. His body moving on pure instinct; pain, blooming through his ribs like flowers, burning through his shoulder. Sicheng shouting. Red and red and red, so much of it, and then nothing at all.

* * *

Jaehyun wakes up somewhere grey and soft and very, very bright. 

The world swims as he tries to force his eyes open. The amber fields, the tall grass, the bronze sky above. Sicheng, outlined in gold. _I’m not worth a war._

He tries to sit up on pure reflex.

Instantly, a hand with a silver ring around one of its fingers appears in his blurry field of vision and presses firmly down on his sternum. Jaehyun struggles futilely. His head feels light. “Sicheng,” he starts, before his vision sharpens and the man leaning over him comes into focus. 

“ _Lie down_ ,” Kim Doyoung hisses. 

Jaehyun lies down. 

The hand lifts. The expression of pure murder vanishes from Doyoung’s face. He resumes whatever he was doing before he tried to crush Jaehyun’s chest: rifling through the medicine cabinet. With a start, Jaehyun realises he’s lying on a bed in the base’s infirmary. 

“What happened,” he rasps. 

“Blaster bolt to the shoulder and the ribs,” Doyoung says brusquely. “Try to move as little as possible.”

Jaehyun breathes out just to spite him, makes a pained noise, and immediately sucks his breath back in. Doyoung glances at him, raises an unimpressed eyebrow, and continues. “Good news: nothing’s broken. You’re lucky you were wearing body armour and the shots were far-range. Change your bandages twice a week to treat the blaster burn. Yes, that is your friend, you are not dreaming. Now shut up and take the bandages so I can let him see you.” 

Guilty as charged. Jaehyun tears his gaze away from Sicheng, dozing off in a chair near the doorway. “I thought recovering patients weren’t supposed to have visitors.” 

“He looked miserable,” Doyoung says shortly. “So I let him in.”

Jaehyun stares at him in wonderment. Doyoung’s neck turns slightly pink.

“Thank you.” Kim Doyoung? Breaking infirmary policy? Jaehyun thinks he might be hallucinating. Or maybe still asleep. 

“If you speak one word of this to anyone else I will kill you,” Doyoung responds, and pokes Sicheng awake as he leaves. 

The door clicks shut. Sicheng rubs the sleep from his eyes, sees Jaehyun, and crosses the room in three strides. Jaehyun’s knocked back into the pillows from the ferocity of his embrace; he closes his eyes and squeezes back.

“Don’t you ever do that again,” Sicheng says fiercely, muffled into Jaehyun’s shoulder. His voice is thick. “Don’t you ever do that again, Jaehyun. If you do that again I’ll kill you myself.” 

Jaehyun’s ribs throb. “I’ll hold you to it.”

* * *

He’s halfway through changing his bandages a few days later when the door of their room swings open and Sicheng comes in. The smile dies on his lips when he sees Jaehyun, shirt crumpled on the bed beside him, wincing as he tries to peel the old bandage off. 

“I can—” Sicheng cuts himself off. “Do you need help?” 

Wordlessly, Jaehyun holds out the pack of bandages to him. The bed gives a little as Sicheng settles on it next to him, his hands deft, steady. 

Silence falls. 

“You know I’m not worth this,” Sicheng finally says, very softly. A numbing coolness spreads across Jaehyun’s ribs as Sicheng presses the edges of the bandage flat against his skin. 

“That’s for me to decide.” Jaehyun exhales. 

“I don’t care.” His fingers brush across Jaehyun’s bare shoulder as he leans closer; a gravitational pull, like falling, like flying. He’s so near Jaehyun can feel the warmth of his skin. “I’m not worth your life.” 

Breathe in. Breathe out. 

“Jung Jaehyun,” Sicheng murmurs, low. The world’s gone silent. “Are you even listening?” 

“No,” Jaehyun confesses, barely a whisper. Like falling, like flying. He closes his eyes. “Tell me again.”

* * *

On the transport out to Taizhou, Sicheng reaches for his hand first. Jaehyun looks down at their entwined hands, surprised, and looks back up at Sicheng. He’s staring straight ahead, the set of his jaw stubborn. Where their fingers are tangled together, he’s trembling, just the slightest. 

* * *

In all honesty, this should feel more final. The entirety of Astraea’s ground forces arranged on the vivid green of the grassy plain, facing the rows and rows of Empire soldiers in reflective black armour. Taizhou’s two suns turning the sky above pale blue, almost white.

From where Jaehyun and Sicheng are standing, the Empire soldiers are forty feet away. Close enough to shoot. 

But to Jaehyun’s absolute confusion, Sicheng tosses his blaster onto the ground and starts walking forward, into the middleground, raising both his hands into the air like a gesture of surrender. 

“ _Sicheng,”_ Jaehyun hisses. Nothing about this makes sense. “Sicheng!”

He starts forward before someone catches him. Jaehyun looks back to see Ten holding him by the wrist, shaking his head. 

“Don’t,” Ten says, softly. “Jaehyun, don’t.” 

Unarmed, alone in the sea of knee-high grass, two thousand blasters aimed at him, Sicheng looks incredibly small. But when he speaks, it carries across the field. Like the final toll of a bell.

“My name is Dong Sicheng, and I’m the firstborn prince,” he says. 

Murmurs of disbelief. Scattered laughter. But Sicheng’s face doesn’t change. He just draws his knife across his palm and raises his fist into the air. 

And where there should be crimson, stark red against his skin, there’s only gold. Glittering in the sun like a tributary as it weaves a slow line down Sicheng’s forearm and pools at his elbow before dripping onto the ground at his feet. 

What had they said, all those months ago, joking across the table in the mess hall? _It can’t be easy._ What had Jaehyun said? _The least he can do is save himself._ Sicheng’s assessing stare, bright, piercing. The setting sun gilding him in amber. 

_I’m not worth a war._

“I am the firstborn prince,” Sicheng repeats. In the absolute quiet his voice rings out across the field, cool and clear. Commanding. Every inch a prince. “And in the name of the Alliance, I give myself up as surrender.” 

One beat. Two. Jaehyun’s heart pounding in his chest. The look on Sicheng’s face—beautiful. Defiant.

Then all hell breaks loose. 

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was just my yunqification caught in hd
> 
> anyway i feel like this feels kind of rushed because i tried to introduce a way bigger world than 3k allowed me to explore but you know what i had fun writing this so it’s alright! can’t believe jaewin is technically a rarepair...
> 
> big thank you to the mods of lwf as well!! this is my first time participating and i’m fairly sure it won’t be my last :”) 
> 
> comments/kudos/feedback are deeply appreciated!! thank you so much for reading; come talk to me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/marknoirs) <3


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